By Kim Coghill

Washington Editor

Myriad Genetics Inc., Hitachi Ltd. and Oracle Corp. formed a collaboration worth $185 million to map the human proteome in less than three years.

The collaboration combines Myriad's proteomics expertise with the information and electronics technologies of Hitachi, based in Tokyo, and the software capabilities of Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., in order to analyze all proteins and their interactions within cells of the body. The work will take place within newly formed Myriad Proteomics Inc., a 50 percent-owned subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based Myriad.

"The human proteome has become the next frontier of modern biology," Peter Meldrum, president and CEO of Myriad Genetics, said during a conference call Wednesday. "Knowledge of the function of proteins that make up the human proteome will impact every aspect of health."

The agreement calls for Myriad to contribute technology valued at $82 million while Hitachi, Oracle and Friedli Corp. Finance, of Zurich, Switzerland, put up a combined $85 million in cash, plus $18 million in technology.

Meldrum said the collaboration aims to develop a comprehensive catalogue of purified human proteins and to identify all human protein interactions and biological pathways, "thus, defining the biology of man."

Because Myriad uses the random shotgun approach to identify proteins and protein interactions, Meldrum said after the first year many of those interactions will begin to coalesce into pathways that will have pharmaceutical utility. In the second year of operation, Myriad Proteomics expects to announce collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and to license data.

"A significant commercial opportunity remains ahead of us and it will be driven by the understanding of the complete human proteome," he said. "The ability to identify proteins, the protein complexes they form and the interactions that define important disease pathways will revolutionize the future of medicine."

Doug Renert, Oracle's vice president for corporate development, said this venture marks Oracle's first investment in biotechnology. "Anytime we decide to invest cash or technology for equity, it is because we have carefully evaluated the opportunity and we expect it to be a great success and to receive a significant return on our investment."

Renert said Oracle has faith in Myriad's ability to complete the project because of the company's expertise in the industry and its very aggressive partnering approach.

For Myriad's part, the company will use its proprietary ProNet protein interaction technology, which is an industrialized high-throughput version of the yeast two-hybrid system, and ProSpec, a proprietary mass spectrometric technology for the identification of protein complexes. Combining these complementary technologies is necessary to identify human protein interactions and biochemical pathways. Both the ProNet and ProSpec will be applied in a shotgun approach.

Oracle brings to the agreement its informational database technologies and will assist Myriad in creating its own database. Meanwhile, Meldrum said, Hitachi will provide hardware, particularly in the area of computer storage equipment.

The catalogue of proteins will become a resource to undertake structural biology studies such as X-ray crystallography and 2D-NMR with an aim to identify protein domains of biological and therapeutic significance. The availability of such structural information will allow Myriad to match the chemical diversity of available compounds with the novel therapeutically relevant proteins, leading to the pursuit of chemi-proteomic strategies that will enable the design of novel therapeutic compounds in the context of relevant structural information.

"Ninety percent of the drugs on the market today treat only the symptoms of diseases," Meldrum said. "Armed with functional proteomic information we will be able to develop new pharmaceutical products and treat the cause of diseases, not just symptoms."

Myriad Proteomics will market its proprietary database and set of proteomic materials to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for therapeutic and diagnostic product development.

This collaboration is different than the recently announced Human Proteome Organization, Meldrum said. (See BioWorld Today, April 3 and 4, 2001.)

HUPO's goal is to identify all human proteins and produce recombinant purified versions of those proteins. "That is extremely important research, but it just gives you the name of the protein - the amino acid sequence of the protein - it tells you very little about what that protein does," he said. "Myriad's focus gets much more to the heart of providing information that can be used to cure disease and develop the next generation of drugs and that is our goal."

HUPO, a global group of scientists led by a 24-member council, was created in mid-February to assist in increasing the awareness and understanding of proteomics and the opportunities it offers in the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of disease.

Myriad Genetics' stock (NASDAQ:MYGN) closed Wednesday at $30.765, down $3.234, or 9.51 percent. Hitachi's stock (NYSE:HIT) closed at $81.35, down $2.05, and Oracle's stock (NASDAQ:ORCL) closed at $13.66, up 41 cents. n